Segun called again before eight the following morning.
“I found the reference I mentioned.”
Damilare stopped halfway through buttoning his shirt.
“The one connected to the Yaba file?”
“Not exactly.”
“What is it?”
“Come and see it.”
The line went dead.
Damilare looked at his watch.
He had learnt not to press Segun for details when the older man sounded like that.
By nine, they were in Surulere.
Temilade arrived a few minutes after him, stepping out of her car with a folder tucked beneath her arm.
“You sound very serious on the phone,” she said.
“I was.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer I have.”
She studied his face.
“Did Segun find something?”
“Yes.”
They went upstairs.
Segun was waiting beside his desk, a thin brown file open in front of him.
The office looked exactly as it had the previous day—old cabinets, tired walls, and a standing fan turning slowly in the corner.
But Segun had removed several papers from the file and arranged them separately.
“This came from a records box transferred from your father’s old practice,” he said to Damilare.
“Another one?”
“Yes.”
Damilare frowned.
“You’ve already shown me the material relating directly to the Yaba transaction.”
“This isn’t from that file.”
Segun pushed a photocopy across the desk.
“It was filed under another matter entirely.”
Damilare read the heading.
There was no mention of Yaba.
No, Samuel Adebayo.
No, Ademola Holdings.
Nothing that immediately explained why Segun had called them.
Then he reached the bottom of the page.
A reference number.
He compared it with the number in his own folder.
They matched.
Temilade leaned forward.
“So they were connected.”
“Possibly,” Segun said.
“Possibly?”
“The reference number tells us the files were cross-referenced. It doesn’t tell us why.”
Damilare turned another page.
A handwritten note appeared in the margin.
Akinwale—statement pending.
Temilade’s attention fixed on the name.
“Mrs. Akinwale.”
Segun nodded.
“She was the witness?”
“Yes.”
“The one in the photograph?”
“Yes.”
Temilade looked at Damilare.
For the first time, the woman from the old photograph had become more than a face preserved on fading paper.
She was somebody who had stood in the room when all this began.
“Where is she?” Temilade asked.
Segun opened an old notebook.
“Her original address is useless. She moved.”
“When?”
“2006.”
He pointed to a second entry.
“This was the last address recorded by your father’s office.”
Damilare copied it.
“Do we know if she still lives there?”
“No.”
“Then why bring us the address?”
Segun closed the notebook.
“Because there is another note.”
He opened the file again.
The note was brief.
Witness unavailable after incident.
Temilade looked up.
“What incident?”
Segun hesitated.
“I found a separate reference to it.”
Damilare waited.
“She was attacked.”
“When?”
“2007.”
Temilade’s expression changed.
“Was she killed?”
“No. She survived.”
“What happened?”
“According to the record, she was confronted by two men outside her residence.”
“Did she identify them?”
“No.”
“Were they arrested?”
“Nothing in the file says so.”
Damilare looked down.
“Was anything taken?”
“Some papers.”
The room became quiet.
“Which papers?” Temilade asked.
“That is the problem.”
Segun spread his hands.
“The record only says documents were removed.”
“Does it say they were the Yaba documents?”
“No.”
Temilade frowned.
“So we don’t know.”
“No.”
Damilare leaned back.
“But somebody was looking for documents from a witness connected to the 1995 matter.”
Segun looked at him.
“That is what worries me.”
Temilade stared at the photocopy.
The date—2007—stood out.
Twelve years after the property meeting.
Long after Samuel had disappeared from the records.
Long before Temilade knew there was anything missing from her own history.
“Why would anybody still care in 2007?” she asked.
Segun didn’t answer.
Damilare did.
“Because whatever was in those documents may still have mattered.”
Temilade looked at him.
“To whom?”
“That is what we’re trying to find out.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
Damilare paused.
“I keep hearing that.”
She looked at the papers.
“Every time we find something, somebody tells me what it might mean for the property. The title. The company. The old transaction.”
She touched the date with one finger.
“But this happened before I was even old enough to know my own name.”
Segun watched her carefully.
Temilade continued.
“If that woman knew something about 1995, then she may have known something about Simi.”
Damilare said nothing.
“And if she knew something about Simi…”
Temilade stopped.
She did not finish the sentence.
She didn’t need to.
She folded her arms.
“I want to speak to her.”
Segun nodded slowly.
“So did your father.”
Damilare looked at him.
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before he died.”
Damilare’s expression tightened.
“You never mentioned that.”
“You never asked.”
“Segun.”
The older man sighed.
“Your father made several attempts to locate her after the attack. He never told me exactly why.”
“And?”
“He eventually stopped.”
“Why?”
Segun looked at the old notebook.
“I don’t know.”
Damilare stood.
“Then we—”
They left shortly afterwards.
The address led them to a residential street in Yaba where old houses stood behind high walls and newer buildings had appeared wherever somebody had found enough space to build.
The address itself was still there.
But the house had changed hands.
A mechanic working beneath the bonnet of a Toyota pointed them towards a woman who had lived in the neighborhood for years.
“She may know,” he said.
“Ask Mama Kemi.”
They found Mama Kemi sitting outside a small provision shop.
Damilare showed her the name.
“Mrs. Akinwale?”
The woman squinted at the paper.
“Ah. Akinwale.”
“You knew her?”
“She lived there.”
“For how long?”
“Many years.”
“Do you know where she went?”
Mama Kemi shook her head.
“She stopped coming around after the trouble.”
“What trouble?”
The older woman lowered her voice.
“Some men came one evening.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember the year.”
“2007?”
She looked at Damilare.
“Yes. Around then.”
Temilade felt her stomach tighten.
“Was Mrs. Akinwale hurt?”
“She was taken to the hospital.”
“Did she leave afterwards?”
“Yes.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
She thought for a moment.
“But her niece came later.”
“Her niece?”
“Yes. To collect some things.”
“What things?”
Mama Kemi shrugged.
“Boxes. Clothes. Papers.”
Temilade looked at Damilare.
“Did you see the papers?”
“No.”
“Do you remember where the niece took them?”
The woman shook her head.
Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “There was a man.”
Damilare turned back.
“What man?”
“He came two days before the niece.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked if Akinwale had kept old papers.”
Temilade felt the air leave her lungs.
“What did you tell him?”
Mama Kemi looked at her.
“I told him I minded my own business.”
Damilare almost smiled.
“That was probably wise.”
The woman pointed down the road.
“He asked about the house at the back too.”
“What house?”
“The old property behind the compound.”
Temilade looked in the direction she pointed.
There was an old two-story building partly hidden behind a newer fence.
Damilare followed her gaze.
“Was that connected to Mrs. Akinwale?”
“I don’t know.”
Temilade studied the building.
Something about its proportions caught her professional eye.
The front had been altered, but the original structure was still visible beneath the newer work.
She had seen buildings like that before.
Old foundations.
New money.
History covered with plaster.
She looked at Damilare.
“Let’s go.”
They had taken only a few steps when his phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
One message.
You should not be looking for Mrs.
Akinwale.
Temilade read it over his shoulder.
Neither spoke.
Damilare looked back towards the street.
The mechanic was still working on the Toyota.
A bus passed.
A woman crossed the road carrying a basket.
Nothing looked unusual.
That was what made the message worse.
Temilade’s phone was in her hand.
She opened Bolanle’s contact.
Her thumb rested over the call button.
She wanted to hear her voice.
She wanted to ask one question.
Why did Simi disappear?
But she stopped.
For thirty-one years, she had accepted the life she had been given without questioning where its first page had gone.
Now she knew there was a missing page.
Perhaps more than one.
Calling Bolanle before she understood what she was looking at might give someone else the chance to decide what she was allowed to know.
She locked the phone.
Damilare looked at her.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
She slipped the phone into her bag.
“But I’m beginning to understand what I need to do.”
“What?”
“Find the truth before I ask anybody to explain it to me.”
They walked back towards the car.
Behind them, the old building stood in the afternoon heat, its newer walls covering whatever had been there before.
Temilade looked at it once more.
She had spent her professional life studying structures.
She knew that a building could be renovated, repainted, and given a new purpose.
But the original foundation remained.
Sometimes it only took one crack in the surface to reveal how much of the old structure was still underneath.
She opened the car door.
For the first time, the investigation no longer felt like something happening around her.
It belonged to her.
And somewhere beneath thirty-one years of family silence was the foundation of a life she had never been told how to read.